That\’s right. For a limited time only if you buy any of our gift or home decor products we promise that you will lose ten pounds in just one week without dieting, start making over $10,000.00 a month without having to work and live forever. Don\’t take our word for it. We have a testimonial from some guy.

\”I bought something from their website. Within two days I had lost five pounds, won the lottery and the terminal illness that I had just vanished.\”
\”Anonymous\”

Yes, we are joining the legion of shameless hustlers and hucksters and will now make absurd, baseless claims about the benefits of buying from us. After all, there must be a lot of money in the lying through your teeth business because a lot of people are doing it. We realize that making baseless claims is nothing new and that we are not pioneers. However, after watching a few recent infomercials and reading a couple of newspaper ads, we feel that the time is right for us to act.

Someone is making a lot of money with these cons because they are not cheap. An infomercial can cost $50,000 and more plus whatever you have to pay for broadcast time. You need a desk, a television camera and someone to sit across from you who speaks with an authoritative voice and pretends to be amazed at what you are offering. For an additional charge you can hire a studio audience that will applaud you as if you were an A list celebrity. The newest one that I see over and over is a guy who is the only person in the world who has figured out how to make money in today\’s real estate market and will let you in on it for only $19.95. Sure real estate pitches like these have always been around, but this one is more troubling. The reason is that we have never, ever had a real estate market as bad as this one. No one really knows what is going on. Property values have plummeted at an unprecedented rate, loans are hard to come by, residential and commercial properties are overbuilt and no one really knows what to do about this – except, of course, this guy.

My newest favorite is a diet infomercial. As long as you sprinkle some kind of powder over your food you can eat anything you want and still lose weight. Really? Actually it is hard to pick between that one and the one that claims that no matter how severe your arthritis it can be cured by drinking some juice. As someone who had a good friend who suffered with the most severe type of crippling arthritis I am not amused.

Then there are the newspaper ads. I live in a major metropolitan area. The newspaper often runs full page ads in the front section touting the ridiculous. My favorite is the one that claims that Einstein\’s theory of relativity holds the code to curing all types of maladies and these guys cracked the code. Again, they must be making money because my estimate is that a full page ad costs between $15,000 and $20,000. And they are not one and done. Their ads run a few times a year.

Even though we have not lived in a caveat emptor society for a long time, the government doesn\’t do much about these sorts of things except in egregious circumstances. Several years ago the FTC did take the bold step of requiring that ads that made fantastic claims had to say \”Results may vary\” or something like that. More recently the FTC adopted a rule stating that these types of advertisements must clearly and conspicuously disclose the generally expected results a consumer can expect and that the advertiser must also rely on adequate substantiation for a representation. But this only applies if you have people giving testimonials. If someone appears in an infomercial and says \”I used Joe\’s making money system and I made a billion dollars\” then the rule applies. If testimonials are not used then it doesn\’t. The guy who figured out today\’s real estate market gets around this by saying something like \”I have talked to a number of people who have used my system and they confirm that it works.\” Very clever.

But I am not here to condemn these people. I am here to praise them and to join them. So again, for a limited time only if you buy any of our gift or home decor products we promise that you will lose ten pounds in just one week without dieting, start making over $10,000.00 a month without having to work and live forever. We are so sure of this that we give you the standard thirty day money back guarantee.

But that\’s not all. If you buy something from us in the next 24 hours (or whenever you get around to it) for a bonus we will guaranty that you will immediately look 10 years younger.

Note: Results may vary.

Text only about the author:

Unique Gifts operates an online store that specializes in the sale of unique gifts and hard to find items for home decor. For a complete selection please visit http://www.uniquegiftsanddecor.com. Any resemblance between Unique Gifts and Decor and the website that is the subject of this article is purely a coincidence.

Author Bio: Don Oppenheim\’s son operates an online store that specializes in the sale of unique gifts and hard to find items for home decor. For a complete selection please visit Unique Gifts and Decor. Any resemblance between Unique Gifts and Decor and the website that is the subject of this article is purely a coincidence

Category: Society
Keywords: home decor, gifts, unique gifts